


Chasing Ghosts

by trichoglossus



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Amnesia, Disappearance, Gen, Irondad, Irondad/spiderson - Freeform, Kidnapping, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Has A Heart, i’ll add more as I write!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2019-08-01 06:32:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16279457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trichoglossus/pseuds/trichoglossus
Summary: “Peter…,” Tony Stark says slowly.Peter meets his eyes.“You’ve been missing for three weeks.”[hiatus]





	1. Weight

**Author's Note:**

> [Update 4/30/19] A note before you start reading: I may very well never finish this! I debated deleting it, but wanted to leave the comments up for inspiration. Quite a few people have done this trope now, and I’m not sure if I would add anything new to it. Regardless I don’t want to say I’ll never finish it, because I might come back to it in the future.
> 
> Anyway: if you decide to read, enjoy!

Awareness returns to him gradually as his mind trips out of a thick fog. He pulls his eyes open with significant effort, and closes them when all he can see is a blurry mess.

He attempts to gather himself, breathing slowly and taking stock of his situation. He is lying on his side. The surface beneath him is hard and dirty. He can hear a road nearby. The air smells like gasoline and trash.

He shifts gingerly and realizes that every muscle in his body is aching, down to his fingers. He groans and curls in on himself. He tries again to open his eyes and find out where he is. He blinks furiously until the scene in front of him takes shape.

He is lying in… an alley? In a city. Hopefully New York, but with his luck, he could be anywhere. It is daytime, but the alley is dark. He exhales and attempts to push himself up to sit against the wall.

Bad idea. His wrist jolts as if shocked when he tries to put weight on it and he goes limp, letting his weight return to the ground.

 _Okay_ , he thinks. _So getting home on my own isn’t an ideal option._ But he needs to get home eventually. Aunt May must be worried sick. How long has he been here, anyway? How did he get here?

And what the _hell_ happened to him?

He realizes with a start that he cannot remember what happened. How he got here, how he got hurt, who hurt him, _anything._ The vague thought comes to him that this is bad.

As he begins to try and turn onto his back, he realizes that there is something in his pocket. Something hard and phone-shaped. Feeling elated, he slowly reaches into his pocket and takes out — _yes!_ — his phone. Hoping desperately that the battery isn’t dead, he turns it on, huffing a sigh of relief when his lock screen (a recent selfie of him and May) greets him.

He can’t call May. She would be frantic if she saw him in this state, and she has enough stress in her life without him adding to it. Ned was a better choice, but it was — he turns on his phone again — almost 4 am on a school night, and once Ned falls asleep nothing can wake him up. So that left one option.

Clumsily, he types in his passcode, having to redo it twice before his trembling fingers can get it right. He scrolls down his contacts list. He still can’t quite believe he has Tony Stark’s _personal_ phone number. Mr. Stark hadn’t given it to him at first, but after the mess he’d made at Homecoming, the man had decided to get more involved in the whole “mentoring” business. That was what Mr. Stark had told him, anyway. His personal bet was on Happy threatening to resign if he’d had to hear one more voicemail from him.

He is about to call Mr. Stark when he notices a familiar sound. It is getting louder, as if it is coming closer. He can’t quite put his finger on where he knows it from at first; the cogs in his brain are still warming up.

It hits him just as a metallic clang sounds behind him. Forgetting his aches and pains for a moment, he rolls over onto his back to see the Iron Man suit standing tall in the shadows of the alley. _Oh._ “Uh, Mr. Stark—“

He cuts himself off as the suit begins retracting, allowing Tony Stark himself to stumble — yes, _stumble —_ out of it towards him. The man looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks; he can tell even in the dim light that there are dark circles under his eyes, and he needs a shave. Weird, he could’ve sworn that yesterday the man was fine. The fleeting thought is pushed aside as Mr. Stark collapses to his knees at his side.

“Peter!” The man exclaims.

 _Oh. Peter._ _That’s right._ He hadn’t even realized that he couldn’t remember his name, but now that it has slammed its way into his ears, Peter blinks as memories force their way to the front of his mind. His parents’ blurry faces smiling down at him, Uncle Ben dying beneath him—

“Peter, oh my god, are you okay?” Mr. Stark’s hands hover over him uncertainly, shaking. He looks afraid to touch Peter, as though he may fall apart at a moment’s notice.

Peter blinks up at him. He can’t quite believe the man is here. His thumb still hovers over his phone, though the screen has long since gone dark.

“Kid, talk to me, please.” His voice is strained.

The familiar nickname jolts him out of his stupor. “Oh — uh. Hi, Mr. Stark.” His voices cracks, his throat feels rusty.

The man stares at him, disbelief dripping down his face. Then a startled, almost hysterical laugh comes out of his mouth.

Peter flinches slightly, unsure of what has prompted this response.

“Hi — sure, sure kid, hi. Hi to you too,” Mr. Stark says, rubbing his face with one hand and leaning forward onto his other.

“Uh, I was just about to call you,” Peter offers, trying to fix his mistake, whatever he’d done. “I think I… need some help? I don’t think I can stand up.”

“Right — right, yeah. Let’s… just get you to the Compound. Happy’s on his way here, and I have a medical team on standby there. Then we can… talk.” 

“Uh, cool.”

Mr. Stark looks uncomfortable, exhausted, but at the same time… relieved. As if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. Peter studies the man’s face; any embarrassment he might have felt from staring is overpowered by his bone-deep exhaustion.

“Uh… are you okay, Mr. Stark?” Peter asks.

An incredulous smile creeps across the mechanic’s face. “You’re asking _me,_ kid? I should be asking you.”

Peter makes the aborted gesture of a shrug. “I mean, apart from being more sore than I knew I could _get,_ I’m okay. I think. Uh, hey, Mr. Stark, do you know what happened to me?”

Peter shifts, wondering when Happy is arriving. The ground is starting to get pretty uncomfortable. There’s a rock digging into his shoulder. Realizing his mind is drifting, Peter drags his gaze back to Mr. Stark’s face.

The man looks alarmed and concerned. What did he ask again? Oh, right. What happened.

“Peter…,” Tony Stark says slowly.

Peter meets his eyes.

“You’ve been missing for three weeks.”

  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting what I’ve got written of Chapter 2 because why not. This is unfinished and unedited!

The words turn over and over through Peter’s head. _There’s no way. No_ way. _How did I just forget three whole weeks?_

He turns his phone on again to stare at the date. It is currently April 14th. The last day he can clearly recall is March 23rd. A Friday. But it feels like that was _today_. He can remember saying goodbye to Ned after school, heading to his usual spot to change into his Spidey suit. Patrol gets a little foggy, but he knows he went out into Queens on his usual route.

He cannot remember if he went home for dinner. Now that May knows Peter is Spider-Man, she always wants him home for dinner to check in with her and do homework. She prefers him patrolling in the afternoon, not after dark, if he has to go out at all. Sometimes she lets him patrol after dinner on weekends. It can get a little stifling having to follow these rules, when he had been free as a bird for his first year as Spider-Man, but Peter wants to stay on May’s good side. He’s lucky she lets him do this at _all_. She could have found a way to stop him if she’d really wanted to. May is much more formidable than she looks.

Mr. Stark clears his throat beside him, and Peter is pulled back into the present. He is stretched out in the backseat of one of Mr. Stark’s cars, his feet in Mr. Stark’s lap. Happy is driving. 

“Does May know where I am?” Peter asks. He’s still trying to believe that he’s been gone for _three weeks,_ but he trusts Mr. Stark. It would be a strange thing to lie about, and Mr. Stark’s extreme reaction to finding him all but confirmed it. Peter has never seen the man look so distraught.

But if he has been gone that long, May must be out of her mind. Has she been working? Did she think he was dead? It must have been hard for her, being alone in the apartment, without him or Uncle Ben.

Peter glances up as Mr. Stark nods. “I texted her, told her you’re safe. Asked her to wait for more details until we can get you looked over, since…” He pauses. “Well, we don’t really _know_ any details. Apparently. Kid, you really don’t remember anything?”

Peter closes his eyes and lets the gentle rumble of the car soothe him. He tries to think back to what happened after he left for patrol toda— er, three weeks ago.

A vague sense of discomfort comes over him, a feeling of _wrong_. He opens his eyes, face scrunched in frustration.

“No,” he admits lowly. “I remember going out on patrol after school, and that’s it. I don’t think I made it back home for dinner though, right?”

“Right,” Mr. Stark confirms. “I lost track of you a few hours into your patrol. Your suit’s signal was damaged, and a few days later we dragged it out of the Hudson.”

Peter is silent at that. He had noticed that he was back in the clothes he’d worn to school — they were dirty and torn, but definitely not his Spider suit. But he hadn’t thought about what that meant. That someone had decided to change him from a superhero back into a civilian. That someone — possibly multiple people, possibly _supervillains_ — now knew that Peter Parker was Spider-Man.

He groans. The more he thinks about this, the sharper the pain in his head gets. Peter closes his eyes again, trying to relax until they get to the Compound. He can’t _wait_ to sleep in a real bed again, he hasn’t gotten to in _ages._

Wait—

Peter freezes. Where did that thought come from? _Am I remembering things?_ He wonders. But try as he might, he can’t quite get his finger on where or what he’s been sleeping on for nearly the past month — only that it was supremely uncomfortable. _I guess that’s better than nothing._

He looks out the window for a few minutes, silent. The quiet is oppressive, uncomfortable, but he can’t find anything to say.

And then the thought comes to him that Tony Stark — world renowned billionaire, genius, etc — looks worn down to the bone and borderline manic presumably because of _him._ Peter Parker. Some random kid from Queens. His brain can’t quite make sense of that. There must have been something else going on, some trouble with Stark Industries or the Avengers. No way was this all because of Peter.

“Uh… Mr. Stark?”

“Yeah, kid?” The man’s weary gaze meets his own tired eyes.

“You… did you… I mean, uh.” Peter stops, unsure of how to word this. “You’ve been looking for me?”

Mr. Stark makes this weird noise that’s somewhere in-between a snort and a cough. “The whole time, kiddo.”

“Oh.” He takes a moment to process this. His headache is only getting worse. “Thanks.”

The billionaire sighs and pats Peter’s shin awkwardly. “Yeah, well. If I hadn’t found you, I think your aunt might have flayed me.”

“Yeah,” Peter nods sagely. “She can be kinda scary.” 

“That’s one way to put it.”

 

———————————————————————

 

They arrive at the Compound in record time. Peter is highly impressed by Happy’s ability to go 20 miles over the speed limit while also keeping the ride so smooth Peter barely feels any bumps. Or maybe that’s the engineering prowess of the car itself.

Mr. Stark is impatient, he wants to get Peter examined as soon as possible. But Peter doesn’t quite see the hurry. Apart from the all-encompassing soreness and his complete lack of memory, the only thing that really hurts are his wrists.

Although — maybe Peter should be a bit more concerned about the memory thing.

If he’s being honest with himself, he can’t quite believe this is happening. It feels almost as if he’s watching the night unfold from afar.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading if you’ve gotten this far.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, so this may be rusty. As a general rule I prefer to have things finished before I start posting them, but I’m letting my hands decide where this fic wants to go, so I thought I’d go ahead and post it so I can get feedback as I write.
> 
> So, let me know what you think so far!


End file.
